Re: Hi to the Ukraine from Tokyo

Hi,
> > > Ukrainian is ["ke<retr>jiw] - Ukr. /y/ is a front (!) vowel,
> > > similar to Fr.
> > > /é/ in 'bébé',
> >
> > Huh? I tended to hear it as a high middle vowel, as in Welsh.
> OK, I speak
> > (or, rather, try to speak) a strange variation of Ukrainian -
> pronunciation
> > from L'viv (where I started actually _speaking_ it) - for example I say
> > "shcho" and not "sho" for "what" as in the Surzhik forms, but vocabulary
> > mostly Kiev/Poltava - I use "duzhe"and not "bardzo/bardzho" for "very
>
> High middle? Like Russian {y} [1] 'yeru'? Strange. Especially for L'viv
> pronounciation, where it tends to be almost [e] in contrast to [E] for
> {e}... I still see it like close-mid front retracted (not retroflex, of
> course!), smth average between [e] and [9].
Not like Russian. Like Welsh. In Welsh, it's not an unrounded "u", it's an
unrounded "ü", so the whole thing really _is_ midway between [9] and [y]. We
were talking about the same sound, only coming to it from two different
directions :-)

The L'viv pronunciation quite confused me in this respect, when I heard
songs by "Okean El'zy" - the singer seemed to mix up the "y" and "e" to my
Russian ears!

Bye,
Pavel